Extract :
NAPOLEON has had many biographers, and his figure towers over all other figures during the first years of the present century. Yet it is no easy task to preent to the reader an accurate and like image of this extraordinary man, and to disengage his personality from the masses of details, and of exaggerated fictions, which have gathered round it. Napoleon has been the subject of excessive adulation, and of excessive detraction, beyond any eminent man of modern times. France made an idol of him for many years ; the kings and princes he comuered vied with each other in doing him homage; and the greatest part of the civilised world joined in the chorus of eulogy.
He suddenly fell, and a violent reaction set in ; in France the floodgates of calumny were let loose against him ; the Coalition of old Europe denounced him as an outlaw ; and he became the mark of incessant, passionate, and most foul obloquy.